Lost in Space
Lost in Space is an American science fiction television series which was originally aired in the United States for three seasons, for a total of 83 episodes from September 1965 to March 1968. The first season of the show was in black and white, the second and third season were in color. It was produced and created by Irwin Allen. In the year 1997 Earth is suffering from overpopulation. John and Maureen Robinson, their children and Major Don West were chosen to leave Earth in a spaceship named the Jupiter 2 to find a planet capable of sustaining life. Their plans go wrong when an enemy agent, Dr. Zachary Smith, sneaks aboard the spaceship to reprogram the Robinsons' robot. Things go wrong and Dr. Smith is trapped aboard the Jupiter 2. His extra weight causes the Jupiter 2 to change course and fly into an meteor storm causing the crew to become "lost in space". Main cast Starring *Guy Williams as Professor John Robinson *June Lockhart as Maureen Robinson Co-starring *Mark Goddard as Major Don West *Marta Kristen as Judy Robinson *Bill Mumy as Will Robinson *Angela Cartwright as Penny Robinson *Bob May as the Robot (uncredited) *Dick Tufeld as the Robot (voice; uncredited) Special guest star *Jonathan Harris as Dr. Zachary Smith Episodes First pilot Season 1 LiS season 1, 29 episodes: Season 2 LiS season 2, 30 episodes: Season 3 LiS season 3, 24 episodes: The would-be Season 4 Though Lost in Space was cancelled before a fourth season could be filmed, some content was produced. For season four Allen's pitch to CBS was to include a new cast character - a purple talking llama named Willoughby. A photo of Marta Kristen talking to a llama is available on her website but there is no corroboration that this is the same creature. The photo can also be seen here. A script including this character was written by Carey Wilbur. Entitled "Malice in Wonderspace" it involves Will, Penny, Willoughby, Dr. Smith, and the Robot and borrows very liberally from Lewis Carroll (including Dr. Smith appearing as a talking caterpillar). It also shows how greatly the series had departed from its original format of action/adventure in outer space to elaborate and childish fantasies. According to June Lockhart, cancellation was finally guaranteed due to a failure of Irwin Allen to deliver a set of story outlines to the network as promised. The CBS executives were meeting to commit to the fall schedule and without these outlines they wouldn't renew a series. This was not done to interfere with content, they simply wanted to be sure there weren't going to be costly production issues due to lack of scripts. Bill Mumy who played young Will Robinson in the show had come up with a script for the first episode of season four, when he showed the script to Irwin Allen the idea was turned down and Irwin went on to start a new T.V. series. poor willy bones! External links * The History of Lost in Space - Part One and Part Two * Lost in Space at the Internet Movie Database * Lost in Space at Wikipedia * Lost in Space at the Irwin Allen News Network * http://pennyrobinsonfanclub.net/ Penny Robinson Fan Club Category:Television Category:Lost in Space